Saturday, December 24, 2011

Family, our way

This time of year my Facebook feed is filled with photos of families doing holiday appropriate activities. Children dressed up for the annual trip to the ballet, in mud boots for the great Christmas tree hunt, in aprons baking up holiday cookies and bundled up in the snow or on ice skates savoring the winter sports. A lot of family portraits are being posted with everyone spiffed up and smiling. Some are professionally taken, other are snapshots of everyone gathered around the tree wishing us all a Merry Christmas. Seeing this constant stream of holiday perfection can make me feel like maybe I don't take this whole family thing seriously enough. Maybe we aren't really making an effort to have all of those picture perfect family moments or maybe it's just that frequently our moments are more frenzied and less photo ready.

Sometimes I look at these photos and start to worry that we aren't doing enough, then I stop and remember that I actually know the people in these photos and for every Christmas card quality photo they post, there was probably at least one child meltdown or sibling battle that wasn't documented for mass consumption. I can pretty safely assume the trip to the ballet was preceded by a long period of maternal nagging to brush hair or put on shoes and there is a good chance there was a fair amount of cussing as the family, immortalized as perfect in the photo, cruised the parking lot looking for a place to stow the car in time to rush to the performance before the curtain went up. This smiling child on skis was probably up at the crack of dawn disturbing the parents' slumber long before any sane person is ready to rise and possibly refused to eat any of the breakfast that they requested but then rejected because the edges of the pancakes were too brown or the egg yolks were too runny.

As deceptive as the photos can be, there are no perfect families. Trust me. That revelation is liberating. As soon as I let that go, I can more easily appreciate the oddness and chaos of my own kith and kin. We may have some photo perfect moments, but those are frequently surrounded by Little Dog decorating his body with bold designs drawn in marker probably predicting some future disposition to tattoos. The best smiles in our snapshots were often achieved not by saying "cheese" but "underpants," the word that seems to constantly amuse these little men. There is no trip to the ballet for our boys, yet, but the exuberant dancing to grandpa's choice of Christmas music is really more our speed, even if we are told "Don't look at us!"as soon as we start watching the performance, (but we do, just more covertly).

Some of our best family bonding may be centered around the new batch of apps grandpa downloaded for the boys, including the one that makes giant fart noises that were followed by the squealing laughter of my small monsters. We may not have made holiday cookies, but the boys did have some sort of competitive crafting event going in the kitchen at grandma's house. Each time a family member was given a finished item from one boy, the other would rush back to the work table to furiously create another item for the same person. By the end of the first evening, I was the proud owner of about a half dozen book marks and a small zoo of pom pom animals with a varying number of eyes.

We have Santa photos, but how many other families have the special holiday memory of their 5 year-old poking Santa's belly to "see how jolly he was". Well we do. And trust me, I'll cherish that memory for years to come, even is Santa was somewhat less enthusiastic about the event. We'll also remember Big Dog's impassioned lobbying that perhaps this year, instead of opening presents on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning, we could open all of the presents on Christmas Eve morning. Though he was unsuccessful in attaining his goal, we may well have a future lawyer on our hands. Let's just hope he uses his powers for good, not evil.

We'll weather the sibling battles, the potty talk, the occasional yelling and in the end the memories that float to the top, the ones that persist, will be nearly as picture perfect as those in my Facebook feed.

3 comments:

The growth that those young lads have experienced is beyond the pale-someday they'll be taller than we are. Best to you and them all.May each step we take lead the way to Peace... in our hearts and our world.

Oh yes! I was one who had photos you may have seen. Every set of pictures left out the ones with the screaming and crying (of course, it would have been hard to capture myself in photo doing those things anyways ;) ). It is all just glimpses of life. The parts that are worthy of FB, anyways!

In April of 2005, my husband and I packed up our two dogs and toddler and moved to Seattle from the San Francisco Bay area. Shortly after our move, I became pregnant with our second child. As exciting as this was, it definitely put a cramp in my ability to explore our new home town. I'm still working hard at adjusting to the new digs.
As a working mom to two small boys, I manage to keep pretty busy. Between business meetings, play dates and pediatrician appointments, there isn't much time left for personal pursuits. But that is a trade off I am willing to make. I'll find time for myself when the boys are old enough to borrow the car, right?
And as though that isn't enough, when we moved we bought our first house, a major fixer upper. Yeah, we wanted the "this Old House" experience, but little did I realize that it would lead to such great experiences, like the sudden loss of running water from a broken water main, or a leaky sewer pipe that kept the toilet off limits for days.
All I can say is that life sure is interesting!